Chapter Ten
I stepped out onto the sidewalk of Rosewood Avenue. The strappy sandals that would, no doubt, be leaving blisters on my heels, slapped against the pavement with every step I took.
Liam was already waiting for me. He lingered in front of the other storefront that bordered The Prologue.
It was a vacant pizza shop that I could vaguely remember being open a few years prior.
He was crouched down with his back turned away from me.
Gentle fingers brushed the petals of a rose bush that Lily had planted recently.
“You know…,” I started to say, my face breaking out into a smile as I watched his whole body startle. “That bush is covered with thorns.”
“I know that,” Liam replied, brushing his hands on his jeans before he stood. “Did you plant this?” His eyes widened as he looked at me. There was an unreadable emotion in those amber eyes.
I shook my head. “Lily. She’s good with plants.”
“Figures. With her name and all.”
I breathed out a soft giggle. “I never made that connection. Do you remember how this street used to be lined with rose bushes back in the day?”
“I do. Do you remember that time you were playing around and cut your finger on one of the thorns?”
“I don’t,” I admitted as we fell into step.
While Rosewood Avenue was going through a stage of revitalization, it certainly wasn’t there yet. The road was nearly deserted, only a few lone shoppers lingered along the sidewalks, and two stray cars were stopped at a stoplight.
“It was a long time ago. My mom dragged us out to get some Christmas shopping done, and even though she told us to stay away from the rose bushes, you didn’t listen.”
I snickered, “Are you sure this isn’t a story about you? You were always the one getting into trouble for not listening.”
“Not that time,” Liam said. A cool breeze drifted down the road, bringing with it the fluttering of the first fallen leaves of early autumn.
“I only remember because you begged me not to tell my mom. You were literally in tears and bleeding, but all you could worry about was not getting in trouble.”
The memory began to come back to me in hazy little bits.
“Yeah, I guess that does sound a little more like me,” I agreed. We were nearly at the ice cream shop now. It was a cute little place—one of the older shops on the street.
The storefront was bright yellow with wide windows that had ice cream cones painted on them. The lit neon sign in the window read simply, The Ice Cream Parlor. “So, did you snitch?”
Liam scoffed, holding a hand to his chest as if I had deeply insulted him. “What do you take me for? Of course, I didn’t snitch. I let you wipe your nasty tears and your gross, bloody finger on the back of my shirt.”
Suddenly, the memory came back to me as one whole, very vivid piece. I remembered every little detail—even the one that Liam was leaving out.
“That’s disgusting,” I said as Liam opened the ice cream shop’s door. A gust of sweet, frigid air hit me in an instant.
“You’re disgusting. I was just being a good best friend.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Especially not when he conveniently left out the sweetest part of the story—the way that he had hugged me while I cried.
“What flavor are you going to get?” I asked, changing the subject.
Liam hummed in response and sauntered up to the display case. It must have housed at least fifty different flavors of ice cream. “I want something weird.”
“Of course you do.” I stepped up beside him, gazing at the different flavors.
“Mhm. And let me guess, you’re going to look at all these flavors, consider them all, then choose the same one you get every time you go out for ice cream.”
He was right. While Liam could go to the same restaurant, coffee shop, or ice cream parlor thirty different times and get something different each time, I could do the same, but never venture out beyond ordering the same dish.
In so many ways, neither of us had changed much at all since we were kids.
“Yeah? And what flavor would that be?” I asked, curious as to exactly how deeply he knew me.
“Some variation of chocolate.” The words had come out of his mouth like he was reciting a fact.
Of course, he was right.
I sucked in a breath, contemplating ordering something different just for the sake of proving him wrong for once. “That’s a lazy answer. Which one would I pick?”
Liam’s lips stretched into an even wider grin as he looked over all the different flavors of ice cream.
“There’s like fifteen different chocolate variants, but if I had to guess, I’d say that you’d pick the most obnoxiously in-your-face, chocolate one you could.
So my vote goes to Super Triple Chocolate Cake Explosion. ”
Right again.
How was it that Liam and I hadn’t truly been friends for over a decade, but he could still read me like a book? And why did that realization make me feel like the ground beneath my feet was vanishing?
“Wrong,” I lied.
I would come back another day to try the Super Triple Chocolate Cake Explosion. I couldn’t let him know that he was right. It felt like I would be losing something if I did.
My eyes scanned over the flavors, and I read out the first moderately appetizing one I saw, “I’d go with Chocolate Cake Batter.” I hated feeling like he was always one step ahead of me, even inside my own mind. “With brownie pieces.”
Liam’s smile didn’t falter. “Close enough. Chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate. You in a cone.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Joke’s on you, I’d get it in a bowl. Cones are too messy.”
“We can actually only add the brownie pieces if you do a milkshake,” the woman working the register said with an apologetic frown.
“That’s fine. I guess I’ll do a small—”
“She’ll take a large milkshake,” Liam interjected. “Extra brownie pieces.”
“Excuse you—”
“I’m paying,” Liam said. His attention flickered back toward the worker. “Make that double extra.”
I sighed. “No, you’re not. You cooked dinner last time. It’s my turn.” Bickering with him in front of the cashier, who looked young enough to still be in high school, felt absolutely mortifying, but I couldn’t let him win.
“Tough,” Liam said before turning back to the employee.
I scoffed and let my gaze burn into the side of his head as he rambled off his order.
“So the milkshake for her, and I’ll do a cone.
One scoop of blue raspberry, one scoop of strawberry banana split, one scoop of cookies and cream, one scoop of—what is that?
Is that actually cheese flavor? Is it supposed to say cheesecake? ”
“That’s one of our dog ice cream flavors, sir.” I couldn’t help but snicker at the tone of the employee’s voice.
“Dog ice cream? Are you allowed to serve it to humans? I’ve never heard of a cheese-flavored ice cream before. That sounds insane.”
The girl’s eyes were wide. If I had to guess, I would say that she probably thought Liam was the insane one. “Um. No one has ever asked me that before. I guess I could sell you a cup of it? I don’t think I would be able to put it on your cone, though. I would probably get in trouble for that.”
“I guess that works,” Liam said with a blindingly bright smile. I couldn’t help but smile too. He could be beyond amusing when he wanted to be.
“Alright,” she said shyly, punching the orders into the register. “Anything else?”
Before Liam could top his disaster cone with anything else, I told the employee, “That’ll be all,” and held out my card.
At the very last second, before I could swipe my card, Liam stuck his into the card reader. “Liam,” I snapped. “What is your problem?”
“Chill, Jessie. What kind of girl complains about getting free ice cream?”
“The girl who already told you she was going to pay.”
Liam held an index finger to his chin and looked up, as if he was deep in thought. “And I believe I already told you: tough.”
“Tough?” I echoed the word, my voice rising in pitch as my aggravation grew. “You’re so annoying.”
“Careful,” Liam said, his voice dipping low. The cashier had stepped away to prepare our ice creams, and he was speaking quietly enough that only I could hear him. “Keep talking to me like that, and I might have to buy you dinner next time.”
From my burning face all the way down to the tips of my toes, my entire body became as hot as molten lava in an instant. With a few words, he had come tumbling back over the threshold, crossing over the line from being just Liam to being what I had explicitly decided I would never see him as again.
I was still staring at him like an idiot, my heart pounding in my chest, when the cashier came back.
Liam took both my milkshake and his ridiculously tall ice cream cone in his hands.
His cone looked as awful as I had imagined it would.
It was a disgusting mountain of flavors that absolutely did not go together.
The employee handed me my oversized milkshake first before handing Liam his. “Oh,” she said, “I almost forgot your Cheese Puppy Cuppy.”
Those words snapped me out of my daze. “Right. What would he do without his Cheese Puppy Cuppy?” I snorted.
The girl flashed us an awkward and kind smile as she handed the white cup filled with orange ice cream over to Liam. “You guys are an adorable couple.”
“Huh?” was all I managed to get out. My body went from burning hot to feeling as though it had been turned to ice in the span of a split second.
How did this keep happening? What was it about Liam and me that led to people always assuming we were the complete opposite of what we were?
I felt a warm, heavy arm fall over my shoulders. “Thanks,” Liam said in the most infuriatingly amused tone.
“We’re not—” I tried to stammer out as Liam guided us out of the shop.
The moment the door shut behind us, I shook his arm off me. I had no idea why I had let him keep it there for as long as I did. All that I knew was that the tiniest part of me missed the warmth of it when it was gone.
“Why didn’t you correct her?” I asked as we started down the sidewalk.
“Because it was funny.”
“I hate you.”
“You wish you hated me.”